With Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in Africa on his first
overseas trip of the year, our government yesterday published its
first ever policy paper on Africa.
It is a great idea to share with the rest of the world our
perspective on Africa, our policy goals there, and our approaches
to achieving them.
The document places special weight on sincerity, equality and
mutual benefit, solidarity and common development as the country's
guiding principles in dealing with relations with Africa.
From the UN to summits of developed countries, Africa has
commanded considerable attention in the world's recent discourse on
development.
Despite all the sympathetic rhetoric and vows of assistance, the
people of Africa have seen few benefits.
What distinguishes China's Africa policy from that of some other
countries is its truthfulness and non-exploitive nature.
When the Chinese talk about friendship with Africa, they mean
it.
The 1,860-kilometer Tanzania-Zambia Railway shows that.
The mammoth project was an astronomic burden on our young
People's Republic, which itself was recovering from debilitating
natural disasters and under tremendous pressure from Western
sanctions in the mid-1960s.
Responding to then Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere's pledge
to repay the expensive kindness, however, late Chairman Mao Zedong
simply said a country winning independence earlier has a moral
obligation to help newly independent ones.
To fulfil that obligation, a total of 50,000 Chinese workers
were dispatched to Africa, 65 of whom died there.
Beyond that, numerous factories, farms, schools and hospitals in
operation today on African soil are fruits of Chinese
benevolence.
For decades, our provinces and major cities have sustained a
tradition of sending volunteer medical service teams to Africa.
Mao declined the Tanzanian president's offer to repay our
generosity. But our African brothers have never forgotten those
altruist gestures of fraternal affection.
Upon the People's Republic of China's official assumption of
membership of the UN, Mao said with gratitude that we were elevated
to the world body by our African brothers.
Past exchanges of goodwill have laid solid groundwork for the
two sides to bring their time-honored friendship into the present
and future.
The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, a Chinese initiative
launched in 2000, stands as an ideal platform to inject new
vitality into the historical partnership.
Respectively the world's biggest developing country and the
continent featuring the highest concentration of developing
countries, China and Africa face similar challenges in pursuing
progress.
In addition to traditional forms of assistance, we can also
deliver benefits to our African partners through trade and other
cooperative projects. Our principle of mutual benefits weighs
heavily at this point.
From their trade with us, African countries not only receive our
capital and products, but also technologies, management know-how,
and, most important of all, goodwill.
Our government has honored its promise of a huge debt exemption
package for African countries with financial difficulties. It has
also offered low or zero-tariff treatment to imports from the
least-developed African countries.
Under the China-Africa Forum framework, our country has opened
various training programs for talents from Africa. That will prove
a substantial boost to Africa's self-reliance in human
resources.
"In light of its own financial capacity and economic situation,
China will do its best to provide and gradually increase assistance
to African nations with no political strings attached," says the
policy paper.
That is an essential statement to define the China-Africa
relationship.
It was the freedom from political preconditions that cultivated
the genuine trust in our ties.
With such a vital cornerstone, our friendship is guaranteed to
sustain and thrive.
(China Daily January 13, 2006)
